SCOTUS: A Powerplay Novel

by Selena Laurence

  He saw the concern on her face morph into fear, and she nodded once, crossing her arms protectively over her chest.

  He faced her, hands on his hips. “For the last week or so, I’ve been followed. I noticed the guy pretty early on and alerted a friend of mine in the Pentagon. He helps me out with security stuff if I ever need it. He has a lot of connections.”

  She nodded, staying perfectly still, arms wrapped around herself, obviously preparing for something awful. He fought the urge to reassure her, because if anyone needed reassurance here, it was him.

  “Jeff had someone follow the guy who was tailing me—partly to make sure I was safe, but mostly to find out who he was. It took a few days, but this morning, he was able to call and tell me who the guy is.”

  “I’ll let the part about you being followed and not telling me about it go for now, but who is it?” she asked, eyes ten shades of unhappy.

  Teague swallowed down the wave of guilt that flowed over him. It hadn’t ever occurred to him to tell her about the tail. Those kinds of things were handled by the Powerplay club. He never included anyone else in that business. Maybe he should have.

  “He’s a PI, just some run-of-the-mill guy who hunts down cheating spouses for a living. But it’s who hired him that matters. And that was your boss, Brice Carter.”

  He knew in an instant that this was as big a surprise to her as it was to him. Her shock was real and true, but it was replaced with a look of horror in mere seconds.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped.

  He began to pace around the dining table. “Did you know?” He still needed to hear her say it—that she wasn’t involved in this.

  “What?” She blinked at him.

  “Did you know that he’d hired someone to tail me? Do you know what he thinks he’s going to find?”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “You think I’d know Brice had hired someone to follow you and I wouldn’t tell you?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s hard to believe that he would do it without looping you in. You are the reporter assigned to all the stories on me, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “But I would never have kept something like that from you. This is the first I’ve ever heard of it.”

  “But you have been keeping something from me, haven’t you?” he asked. “I can see it in your eyes, Dee.”

  Her gaze fell, and she slumped onto a nearby barstool.

  “Dee? If you have something to tell me, now is the time. We can’t go any further if you don’t. I’m…” He took a deep breath. “I’m getting in too deep. I can’t afford to fall apart right now. Do me that kindness at least. Whatever it is, give it to me now when there’s still a chance I can handle it.”

  He could feel the waves of indecision rolling off her as the seconds ticked by. Finally, she took a deep breath, then let it spill. “It’s Roland,” she said, looking him in the eye. His heart dove to his gut.

  “You told your boss?”

  “My God, no,” she cried out. “I’ve been doing everything I can to keep him from finding out.” She ran a hand through her hair in frustration, then sighed long and slow. “I know him.”

  Teague’s head spun in confusion. “What? Who?”

  “Roland. I know him.”

  He blinked at her as his heart raced and his hands began to shake.

  “What?” His voice cracked as memories came crashing down, moments—events, birthdays, dinners, walks to school—a childhood full of moments with his big brother. Then that night, the night it had all ended—gunshots, sirens, the look on his mother’s face when she’d received call after call from police in two states. The final conversation they’d ever had—the day they’d declared that Roland was dead to both of them.

  “A couple of years after we split up, I’d started working at the Boston Chronicle. I was assigned to a story on prisoners serving life sentences. I remembered what you’d told me about Roland. I missed you so much, Teague—” She swallowed hard, her eyes misting. “I used it as an excuse to find out about him. I researched him, learned everything I could about his case, and then…I went and interviewed him.”

  Teague sat down on a chair at the dining room table, knocking down a candlestick that sat on the table at the same time, the crash hardly even registering as the blood rushed into his ears.

  She fell to the floor in front of him on her knees.

  “I met him, and he was so much like you, it tore me to pieces. I couldn’t believe that someone so bright, and kind and rational was sentenced to life with no chance for parole. And he was there alone. When I asked him about family, he just said that he didn’t have any.

  “I spent two days talking to him, observing him, learning everything about him and his case that I could. Then it was time for me to leave and go back to Boston, and all I could think about was how sad and lonely he must be, and how sad you were when you talked about him. I thought about all the ways I’d failed you…” She put her hands on his knees, and he flinched at the contact, but she didn’t leave, didn’t pull away.

  “I thought that even if you didn’t know about it, I could still do this one thing for you—I could watch over your brother for you. And so I did. I have been for years.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, his voice so raspy, he almost didn’t recognize it.

  “I talk to him every few months, send him money for his prison account, mail him letters and care packages. And I visit. Five times I’ve visited him.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, and without even thinking, he reached out and wiped them away, his hands still trembling.

  “He knows that you and I were engaged. We talk about you—we never use your name, and I always come under the guise of investigating for an ongoing story—but it helped both of us so much. Talking about you makes him so happy, Teague. You can’t imagine how proud he is of you—”

  It was more than he could take all at once. More than his mind and his heart could sort through. “Stop it!” he yelled, standing and backing away from her. He shook his head. “Just stop! Jesus, Dee. What the hell do you expect me to do with this?”

  He leaned his hands on the table, breathing hard. Adrenaline sped through him like a raging river, white water boiling in his veins. He swept his arm across the surface of the table, knocking candles, salt and pepper shakers, and an empty vase onto the floor, where it all shattered like his very brittle heart was doing at the same moment.

  “Fuck!” he shouted as Deanna flinched, still kneeling in front of the chair he’d been sitting in.

  “Please,” she begged. “Just hear me out. All these years and no one has ever known. Roland and I have been so careful. Then on Friday, Brice called me into his office and said he’d been researching and couldn’t find any official records of your brother’s death. He’d also found a Roland Smith in lockup in California. He wanted me to investigate because he thought maybe Roland wasn’t dead after all. That’s why I flew to Chicago that afternoon.”

  He tried to calm his breathing and focus on what she was saying. “You went… You saw my mother?” The pieces clicked into place in his head.

  “I told her what was happening. I explained everything to her just like I have to you. She didn’t want to admit he was alive at first, tried to act like I was wrong, but after she heard that I’d been in touch with him all these years, she gave in.”

  “Holy fuck,” he whispered, leaning against the wall and letting himself slide down until he sat on the floor, knees pulled up as he rested his elbows on them.

  “I have an informant—someone who’s given me information about certain things inside the State Department. Before I went to Chicago, I asked him for a forged death certificate. I made him give it to me electronically so that I could fill out the information. He doesn’t know who it was for. But I made it for Roland, then I got your mother to agree to an interview about how tragic your brother’s life had been and how devastated you both were when he died.”

  “And you presented
all that to your boss,” Teague finished for her, shaking his head.

  She walked to where he sat and knelt in front of him again. “Yes. I gave it to him, it’s irrefutable evidence that Roland is dead.”

  “You’ll lose your career,” he said, pain leaching into every word.

  She wrapped her arms around his knees, bringing her face within inches of his. “I won’t, but if I do, I don’t care—you’re more important. You’re more important than anything else in my world. You always have been. I was just too young and weak to realize it.”

  Then another crystal-clear tear fell down her beautiful face, and Teague sighed. “Jesus, baby. What am I supposed to say to all this?”

  “Process it, ask questions, then realize that I did it all for you, and keep on loving me.”

  “Why did you keep this from me? I thought we agreed that there wouldn’t be any more secrets.”

  “I didn’t want you to have to go through the confirmation process knowing that he was alive, well, and in contact with me. You realized he was out there in the world somewhere, but you didn’t know the details. It was relatively easy for you to say that he was gone forever if anyone asked. I didn’t want you to have to make a new lie, say things to people in public knowing they were false.”

  He sighed, rubbing his jaw as she continued to rest her chin on his knees, watching him with her big shiny eyes.

  “You can’t do shit like this.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “And my mother too…”

  “She loves you so much.”

  “I need some time.”

  The hurt on her face was obvious, but she rallied, pressing her lips together and nodding as she pulled away from him.

  His heart ached as he stood and looked down at her on his floor. She was so small, vulnerable, and yet she had all the power, because she could wreck him like no one else in his life ever had. Ruin him. Turn him into someone he didn’t even recognize.

  He turned toward the front door, then looked back at her over his shoulder. “Is he…is he okay?” he asked, a catch in his voice.

  “He is. He has a perfect record inside. He’s been working on his college degree. He’ll be done in about a year and a half.”

  “God.”

  “And Teague? He’s brave. So incredibly brave… He’s not afraid to die in there.”

  That was when he broke, striding to the door of his house and outside before she could see the tears that fell from his eyes like hot shards of glass.

  It was after two a.m. when Deanna heard the front door open. She didn’t know if Teague would be angry to find her still at his house, in his bed no less, but she knew that if you were committed to someone, you didn’t leave them alone at their greatest hour of need—even if you were the one who’d taken them to that point.

  She heard his footsteps slowly making their way through the downstairs, the wood floors creaking as he went along. After he made a detour to the kitchen, she heard him go through the living room, and then he was coming up the stairs. Her heart thundered, beating out a tattoo that was part fear and part anticipation, her body and soul reaching for him through the darkness like he was a beacon that could guide her safely to shore.

  He entered the room, and she lay perfectly still, keeping her breaths slow and regular, although she thought he must be able to hear her heart thundering in the silence.

  He undressed, his dark form slipping around the room like an inky ghost. Finally, the bed shifted under his weight as he climbed in behind her. He lay down and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her onto her back. She looked up at him, her eyes straining to make out some sort of expression on his face that was cloaked in darkness.

  His movements weren’t smooth or considerate, but desperate and needy. She gave him everything he requested, and a few things he didn’t know he needed. Not a word was spoken as he tugged her camisole off and tore her panties from her legs. He shoved her knees up and buried his face between her legs, licking and sucking roughly as she gasped under the onslaught.

  He slid his hands under her hips to lift her, and his mouth attacked with force as he groaned and growled, shoving two fingers in her channel while sucking on her clit until she cried out, digging her nails into his scalp, and thrusting her hips in erratic circles.

  It took seconds, not minutes, before she was coming hard and fast, and he continued to tease her well past the time it was comfortable. But she let him because she knew he needed it. Needed to have her reach that place where she was so on edge, so uncomfortable, that he was the only one who could stop it or provide relief. The fact was they were the only people who could soothe each other’s troubled souls. They both knew this, no matter how much it frightened them.

  Once the aftershocks had worn off, he moved up her body, licking and sucking along the way, until he reached her mouth. Once there, he whispered, “Promise you’ll never lie again, no matter what. Not to protect me, not for my job or yours. Not for my family, not for yours. Not for our future children, or someone who might as well be dead. Don’t ever fucking lie to me again, Deanna.”

  “I promise. No lies. Ever again. No matter what.”

  He didn’t speak more then, just wrapped her wrists in his big, strong hands, pulled them over her head and thrust into her. She moaned when he entered her, and all her nerve endings reacted as though they’d been shocked by a volt of electricity.

  He pumped fast and hard, and she cried out each time he entered her—soft keening in the velvet night. As the aching tension built back up inside her, he pressed his mouth to her ear and growled, “Come. Now,” before he seated himself as deeply as possible and hissed out, “Fuck!” They came together, and as she tumbled through space in a free fall, she felt it, the shift that happened when her heart and his met up and locked on to each other. And she knew at that moment that no matter what happened, no matter what mistakes they made, no matter what life might hand them, they would never be whole without one another again.

  Chapter 15

  Teague felt like a dead man walking. Every emotion, every question, every doubt and sliver of guilt he’d felt all these years hit him head-on like a Mack truck.

  He’d stumbled into his house at two a.m., fucked Deanna senseless trying to ease the pain, then stumbled out again at five, telling her he wasn’t ready to talk yet, couldn’t deal with her and everything else.

  Now, at nearly eight in the morning, he sat at his desk, his mind a tangle of so much darkness, he was afraid he’d never find the light again. And the one person it was logical for him to talk to was the one he just couldn’t bear right now. Because as much as he loved her and realized she’d done it for him, he kind of hated his mother. And a part of him hated Deanna for entirely different reasons.

  He’d been ashamed to admit to himself as he walked around DC in the dark that he was jealous of Dee. All these years, he’d ignored the fact that the brother he’d once loved was in fact alive, but she’d known him—she’d talked to him, seen him, knew what he liked and didn’t. She’d been able to watch his accomplishments, help him with his needs—fuck, she’d heard his voice. He remembered Roland’s deep voice when he used to comfort Teague when he was in middle school and struggling with the gang kids.

  “Once you grow, they’ll leave you be, little T. Until then, you remember that you’re twice as smart as they are. The smartest always wins in the end.”

  It wasn’t too long after that that Roland joined the Gangster Disciples. Teague always wondered if he’d done it to keep them from threatening Teague. The very thought made his stomach heave in anticipation of emptying its contents.

  He swallowed the bile and looked blankly out his office window. He was fortunate that he didn’t have any meetings on the Hill today, but he wasn’t going to be able to get any work done like this.

  Supreme Court nomination be damned, he needed to get someone else’s take on this. Someone he could trust with the information, someone who wasn’t Kamal, because he’d be oblig
ated to tell the president, who would be obligated to tell the Senate.

  He looked at a photograph on his bookshelf, a picture of the entire Powerplay club at an event three years ago—Kamal, Derek, Scott, Jeff, and Gage, who’d been out of the country dealing with problems with his union’s negotiations in Canada for months now. He’d always kept those men at a small distance, fearful that if they knew the deepest part of his history, they wouldn’t continue to support him. He knew it was irrational—his fear of being betrayed and tossed aside because of who or what he was—but that didn’t make the paranoia go away. Deanna had devastated him so completely when she’d left him all those years ago, he’d never been able to trust that his race wouldn’t become an issue for others in his life.

  And nothing said black man like a brother in prison. It was shameful that he’d allowed those kinds of thoughts to keep him from being his true self with people all these years. And worse, he’d let it keep him from loving his brother. It was sobering and sickening at the same time to realize the extent of his own cowardice.

  It was also time to put an end to it.

  He stood and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair before walking out his office door. “I’ll be back in time for my eleven o’clock,” he told his secretary before opening the door to the stairwell. He knew exactly where he was going and exactly what he had to do, and that was a vast improvement over the last twelve hours.

  Colonel Jefferson Thibadeux was an imposing figure in his full uniform. Teague liked to tease that he was “bedazzled,” but everyone knew what all the medals and ribbons meant—he was a badass.

  And as he met Teague on the lawn outside the Pentagon, Jeff didn’t have a single stitch out of place. His hair was regulation, his steps were crisp, and his movements efficient. Teague didn’t know if it was how Jeff had been before the military, but he’d been this way for so long now, he wouldn’t be him without it.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” Teague said as Jeff reached him and shook his hand, giving him a pat on the back at the same time.